JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 51 из 425The coffin looked like the one in which she had been buried, true, but that might just be misdirection.
Writer’s walk, writer’s block.
I can’t write, I told the voice in the dream. The voice says I can. The voice says the writer’s block is gone, and I believe it because the writer’s walk is gone, I’m finally headed down the driveway, going to shelter. I’m afraid, though. Even before the shapeless white thing makes its appearance, I’m terrified. I say it’s Mrs. Danvers I’m afraid of, but that’s just my dreaming mind getting Sara Laughs and Manderley all mixed up. I’m afraid of- “I’m afraid of writing,” I heard myself saying out loud. “I’m afraid to even try.”
This was the night before I finally flew back to Maine, and I was half-past sober, going on drunk. By the end of my vacation, I was drinking a lot of evenings. “It’s not the block that scares me, it’s undoing the block. I’m really fucked, boys and girls. I’m fucked big-time.”
Fucked or not, I had an idea I’d finally reached the heart of the matter. I was afraid of undoing the block, maybe afraid of picking up the strands of my life and going on without Jo. Yet some deep part of my mind believed I must do it; that’s what the menacing noises behind me in the woods were about. And belief counts for a lot. Too much, maybe, especially if you’re imaginative. When an imaginative person gets into mental trouble, the line between seeming and being has a way of disappearing.
Things in the woods, yes, sir. I had one of them right there in my hand as I was thinking these things. I lifted my drink, holding it toward the western sky so that the setting sun seemed to be burning in the glass. I was drinking a lot, and maybe that was okay on Key Largo hell, people were supposed to drink a lot on vacation, it was almost the law—but I’d been drinking too much even before I left. The kind of drinking that could get out of hand in no time at all. The kind that could get a man in trouble.
Things in the woods, and the potentially safe place guarded by a scary bugbear that was not my wife, but perhaps my wife’s memory. It made sense, because Sara Laughs had always been Jo’s favorite place on earth.
That thought led to another, one that made me swing my legs over the side of the chaise I’d been reclining on and sit up in excitement. Sara Laughs had also been the place where the ritual had begun. . champagne, last line, and the all-important benediction: Well, then, that’s all right, isn’t it? Did I want things to be all right again? Did I truly want that? A month or a year before I mightn’t have been sure, but now I was.
Writer’s walk, writer’s block.
I can’t write, I told the voice in the dream. The voice says I can. The voice says the writer’s block is gone, and I believe it because the writer’s walk is gone, I’m finally headed down the driveway, going to shelter. I’m afraid, though. Even before the shapeless white thing makes its appearance, I’m terrified. I say it’s Mrs. Danvers I’m afraid of, but that’s just my dreaming mind getting Sara Laughs and Manderley all mixed up. I’m afraid of- “I’m afraid of writing,” I heard myself saying out loud. “I’m afraid to even try.”
This was the night before I finally flew back to Maine, and I was half-past sober, going on drunk. By the end of my vacation, I was drinking a lot of evenings. “It’s not the block that scares me, it’s undoing the block. I’m really fucked, boys and girls. I’m fucked big-time.”
Fucked or not, I had an idea I’d finally reached the heart of the matter. I was afraid of undoing the block, maybe afraid of picking up the strands of my life and going on without Jo. Yet some deep part of my mind believed I must do it; that’s what the menacing noises behind me in the woods were about. And belief counts for a lot. Too much, maybe, especially if you’re imaginative. When an imaginative person gets into mental trouble, the line between seeming and being has a way of disappearing.
Things in the woods, yes, sir. I had one of them right there in my hand as I was thinking these things. I lifted my drink, holding it toward the western sky so that the setting sun seemed to be burning in the glass. I was drinking a lot, and maybe that was okay on Key Largo hell, people were supposed to drink a lot on vacation, it was almost the law—but I’d been drinking too much even before I left. The kind of drinking that could get out of hand in no time at all. The kind that could get a man in trouble.
Things in the woods, and the potentially safe place guarded by a scary bugbear that was not my wife, but perhaps my wife’s memory. It made sense, because Sara Laughs had always been Jo’s favorite place on earth.
That thought led to another, one that made me swing my legs over the side of the chaise I’d been reclining on and sit up in excitement. Sara Laughs had also been the place where the ritual had begun. . champagne, last line, and the all-important benediction: Well, then, that’s all right, isn’t it? Did I want things to be all right again? Did I truly want that? A month or a year before I mightn’t have been sure, but now I was.